The loosely organized hackers of Anonymous don't just launch distributed denial-of-service attacks for the lulz. They do it to send a message, which is why they've petitioned the Obama administration to recognize DDoS as a legal form of protest.

Chinese electronics firm ZTE is ramping up its efforts in support of the Mozilla Foundation's open source Firefox OS for mobile phones, and if all goes well, it could deliver a device targeting European customers as early as this year.

Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield has posted photos of Australian wildfires taken from orbit on the In ternational Space station. One image is sufficiently detailed that it depicts flames licking at local foliage.

Further proof - were it necessary - that strong unsweetened coffee is the only correct workplace beverage and that sickly imitation pop is the devil's own satanic brew has emerged this week. Boffins in the States have confirmed that sweetened and "diet" drinks are associated with a significantly heightened risk of mental illness, whereas coffee tends to preserve the sanity of the drinker.

Bad news for Microsoft and Xboxers: in December 2012, Sony shipped sufficient consoles for the number of PS3s the Japanese giant has sold to exceed the volume of 360s Microsoft has sent out by a margin of a million machines.

It’s hard not to feel a little sorry for HTC. Eighteen months ago it was the darling of smartphone manufacturers having reinvented itself from a maker of unbranded handsets for the likes of O2 to an outfit boasting some of the best Android smartphones around.

The Alliance for Wireless Power has approved its own standard and is promising products soon in the hope that its superior technology will help it fight back against rival Qi's first-to-market advantage.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the annual Reg Hardware Awards are here and, once again, we need your help finding the best - and the worst - consumer electronics and IT products of the past year.

The flourishing market for tablet computers has left people wanting more. Those using tablets at work invariably end up buying a keyboard and regularly curse the limitations of a mobile operating system. Those using a Windows laptop at work often wish they could occasionally dispense with the keyboard for convenient touchscreen, hand-held use.

Yahoo! is now offering to encrypt its webmail service with HTTPS for security-conscious users. Meanwhile, an exploit that allowed anyone to hijack Yahoo! Mail accounts if victims clicked on a link was being flogged to cybercrims for $700.

US Army private Bradley Manning, who is accused of "aiding the enemy" by allegedly handing over classified Army documents to Wikileaks, will get 112 days cut from any prison sentence he could get if he's convicted on the charges. This is after a military judge ruled that Manning had been "illegally punished" in a Marine Corps brig.

It was claimed by one market watcher this week that tablets will outsell notebook computers during 2013. By 2016, says another, slates’ share of the PC market will have surpassed all other devices combined.

It may be arguable whether patents are desirable or over-prescribed in the high tech industry, but there is no doubt that companies use patents as competitive – and anticompetitive – weapons, and therefore they have a huge value. Applying for and receiving lots of patents, then, can be seen as an insurance policy against lawsuits as well as a means to generate them, just as much as they are an indicator of inventiveness.

Starboard Storage is taking on three experienced execs to help it grow. Starboard, the re-named and re-energised Reldata, punts a hybrid flash+disk unified file and iSCSI-accessed storage array and has recruited:

Although much of the audio and video technology packed into CES 2013's 1.9 million square feet of exhibition space is indeed impressive, one panelist at an emerging-technology conference session channeled a little 1974 BTO, essentially telling his audience that "You ain't seen nothin' yet."

The Höchstleistungsrechnen is going to have a different brand name and architecture on it at the Norddeutschem Verbund für Hoch- und Höchstleistungsrechnen (HLRN) supercomputing alliance in Northern Germany, now that Cray has beat out SGI for a big bad box that will have a peak theoretical performance in excess of 2 petaflops.

As Australia's heat-wave returns, I’ll be in the Blue Mountains in NSW, surrounded by eight hectares – around 20 acres – of mostly uncleared bush, contemplating both the benefits and shortcomings of modern emergency services communications.